Chapter 6: The barista

The Dating Chronicles: Adelaide edition

I was the new girl on the block at a café in my suburb that I’d frequented a small handful of times but had never become overly familiar with. It was very Melbourne for Adelaide circa 2021 – mismatched furniture, a quirky couple as the business owners, and a list of hot beverages that made customers marvel, and baristas want to bang their head against a wall every time a ‘turkish delight’ was ordered. Who creates a hot drink with six separate steps when you have a single barista behind the machine? Masochists.

It was my first job following the nationwide lockdowns, and despite how much I wanted to be working again, I was riddled with nerves. What if I’d forgotten how to speak to people? What if all of my milk was bad? Would I fit in with this small, tight-knit group of people who acted more like family than colleagues? I was so familiar with the dynamic from experiencing it myself in previous years, but my anxiety was telling me that I was a dumb loser who would never make friends there, and that all of my coffees would be disgusting.

On my first shift post-trial, I was familiarising myself with my new setting, steaming my little heart out whilst I observed one of the owners greeting almost every single customer by name. Despite the café being small in size, the community was a pretty vast sea of individuals who looked like iterations of the kind of people you’d find in Brunswick, myself and my crop cut included. During a quiet period in the day, I was keeping myself busy, refusing to let my hands idle in an effort to ensure that my new bosses understood that I was a strong and reliable workhorse. I had an intense paranoia about being let go after I’d been unfairly dismissed from a previous role as a barista, hence my unprecedented anxiety. Collecting a handful of used coffee cups and saucers in my nervous efforts to stay busy, I entered the back where the barista was stood at his allocated posted for the day: dishy. He was exactly my type for that given era of my life: an unruly head of hair, instrumentally inclined, wearing a pair of dirty, baggy jeans that made me question his personal hygiene.
It was almost immediate between us – as though our pheromones were living and breathing inside of the cups still in my hands and had suddenly jumped out and smacked us in the face. We made small talk about our weekend plans over the sink, discovering first that we were attending the same gig that very evening, and secondly that our birthdays were two days apart. “What are the odds?” I asked him with a smile. He looked at me and laughed in a way that said I would be seeing him later. And I did.
After running into him briefly at the gig and saying a quick hello, I decided on messaging him afterwards to determine his whereabouts. We were both going to the same club for the after-party. What are the odds. I don’t know if I intended to hook up with him when I instigated conversation in the digital ether (probably), but either way it happened. And in true me fashion, it occurred on the dancefloor in front of a sea of people. I hate to love a public smooch.

In the following days it was hard to avoid each other. Given we had so few staff members, we were working together frequently but I still couldn’t determine how to behave around him. Were we taking the route of pretending like nothing had happened, resuming our positions as merely co-workers, or were we taking the route of pretending like nothing had happened knowing that it would occur again. I’d discovered a few days earlier from our bosses that he’d recently experienced a break-up with his long-term partner. And I should’ve known to stay away, but at twenty-three, despite my wobbly self-esteem and lingering anxiety, I’d still deemed myself untouchable. An impenetrable castle of a woman who thought she knew more than she really did. I weighed the scales of potential hurt and immediately waved them away as though I believed I had a willpower made of steel. As though all of the men before him had pulled me down with so much hurt, I’d already hit my quota of low. So, when he invited me to a wedding the following weekend, I threw every ounce of caution to the wind – Why not?

It was difficult for me to determine just how serious he was about the invitation. He’d mentioned it first in passing at work, and again as we were getting into our cars to go home. Was I actually going to attend the wedding of strangers with a man I barely knew? It felt like a loose offer, one disguised in jest but sincere under the surface. I decided to be brazen and follow up on his offer. I messaged him on Facebook asking what colour scheme we were going for, and he promptly replied with a picture of himself in his outfit. “does this answer yr question. I’m thinking, earth and clear blu 11AM sky”. “Hmm” I responded, “I don’t have anything blue tho”. “Bugga!!!” he said, “dominant colour has become green. taking the semi formal vibe incredibly semi”. “I have emerald green” I said, “a frock. that is.” “lovely” he said, “can’t wait to be defrocked on my wedding night”. “I can” I told him.

Without the combined buffer of our working environment and our mutual, horny discretion, I expected things to feel a little less charged between us out in broad daylight. We shared a bottle of wine between us at a small bar, and there was again an element of reciprocal sincerity that we were offering to one another. I was surprised. It wasn’t as though he immediately appeared as any kind of womaniser, it was that I was hyper-aware of his recently single status and had naturally assumed that he would be too caught up in grieving his relationship to want to explore something with somebody new. But still, there we were, having drinks together before attending his friend’s wedding.
The entire night had an air of excitement to it. We were role playing as a married couple, speaking in French accents without warning, and posing for photos together in the pop-up booth at the event. Then, with a morsel of notice, he quickly mentioned that he had to attend a gig briefly, and did I want to come? At this point, I’d stopped erring on the side of caution and was completely immersed in the evening – fuck it, let’s get in an Uber.
We left the city and arrived at Thebby Theatre. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but as we made our way inside, he told me to take a seat, and that they wouldn’t be performing for too long. Wait, what? He’d failed to mention that it wasn’t so much attending a gig, as it was him playing one. I found a seat in the scarcely filled room and watched on as he played the drums for half an hour with a band that I still wasn’t certain he was even a part of. To this day, I still don’t know.

In the days that followed our secret night out, things continued between us. At work we were colleagues who bordered on strangers, barely sustaining conversation with one another despite the close proximity, but behind closed doors we were spending upwards of four nights a week together. It quickly became habitual. We’d finish work and pretend to go our separate ways only to meet up moments later and spend the night together. Within the month, he’d allocated a toothbrush for me at his house, and it wasn’t unusual for me to leave my belongings at his place. I’d wear his ten sizes too big trackies to bed and he’d tell me how he’d been looking for a more appropriately sized pair at the op shop for me to keep at his. We’d go to bars in the city, and he’d tipsily divulge information to me about his parents, his upbringing. We’d cook food at our respective houses and put the leftovers aside for one another. He would see me with my nephew and bite down on his fist, making jokes about our future children. It was the little things, offerings that were more like scraps that I held onto in an attempt to convince myself that he cared. I was starting to care, a lot, but we were still pretending to know each other on a very surface level in public and it had started to gnaw away at me. I’d walk to work the morning after, only to see him mere hours later, greeting each other as though we hadn’t fallen asleep together the night before. In those earlier days, it was horny. The act of trying not to get caught only amplifying things between us. He told me we should keep it to ourselves for the sake of my job security as a new staff member, and I believed him.

As the weeks went by, I was beginning to feel something that resembled jaded. Not only did he have a strong relationship with our bosses (a married couple) having worked there for so long, but one his closest friends worked with us, whilst another worked two doors down and frequented the café often – they both knew. It was isolating. I was still relatively new and trying to determine my social standing within our small staff dynamic, but there was nobody around me who knew him that I could talk to about it. We had knock off drinks all the time. I’d sit there with him, our bosses, and sometimes two of his closest friends. The four of us now too well-versed in pretending nothing was happening between him and I, whilst I sat there uncomfortably avoiding his gaze in case my face gave something away. Sometimes when it was him and I with just our bosses, I felt more like a bystander to their three-person act than someone who was involved in the dialogue. I didn’t know how to appropriately behave as a new employee, colleague, and potential person-of-secret-romantic-interest simultaneously. It was obvious that the three of them were close, but it felt as though their stories were so well rehearsed, that they were happy simply to have somebody new as an audience. I felt like a seal, clapping along to their tales idiotically, not knowing how to organically participate out of fear that I’d say the wrong thing.

Two months into us sleeping together, I had started to grow comfortable despite my denial. I looked forward to our nights together, of Hungry Jacks, of Handmaid’s Tale or The Simpsons, of falling asleep with my head against his chest as he kissed my forehead. Those forehead kisses really fucked with me. I refused to believe that they were anything other than a romantic notion toward me, taking them at face value, but contorting them into something much bigger than what they actually were as a means of proof. I did that with a lot of his gestures, confusing them for something else when he had been showing me who he was the entire time. I started to grow more anxious, recognising the pit in my stomach for what it was when our nights together dwindled from four, to one or two a week. But as a typical twenty-three-year-old woman with a big crush, I decidedly ignored it. Instead, downloading Tinder in an effort to quash my feelings by way of redirecting my attention from him, onto somebody else. I was so convinced I could do it, be the kind of woman that could sleep with multiple people casually, collecting myself in a cool and calm manner, because I ‘didn’t care’. A few days into my lazily swiping between profiles I was disinterested in he came over to spend the night. “I think maybe… we should sleep with other people too? Just to be safe, you know” he said. “Yep. I agree” I told him confidently, despite the sinking feeling in my gut. “I actually downloaded Tinder the other day”. “Wow” he said smiling, “that’s hot”. I couldn’t determine what it was. Had he sensed that I was growing too attached to him or had he already found somebody else that he wanted to sleep with? No matter, I was a cool girl. The kind who was nonchalant about being kept a secret whilst he fucked other women.

And so began my series of unfortunate events. In an effort to appear cool, I did what any young woman in denial about her feelings does: I acted a fool. Having been reduced to little time with him, I would clutch at anything he gave me. Often jumping out of bed at eleven o’clock at night in response to his ‘wyd’s’, driving to his house just to spend a few hours with him. I tried everything in my arsenal. I went to his house in a novelty-sized coat wearing nothing but a purple wig, lingerie, and thigh-high pleasers underneath. On another occasion, I gave him twenty-minutes notice before rocking up almost unannounced, high on mushrooms believing he would find it endearing, only for him to drop me home. I’d send him suggestive photos in an effort to get a fraction of his attention, even if I didn’t see him on the same evening. I even went as far as coaxing him into seeing me by using a bag of coke I’d stolen from a client as bait.
Sometimes he would message me and tell me how horny he was. I always thought it was an invitation, but so often he would inform me moments later that he needed a night to himself. It’s hard to know if that was a conscious act – seemingly offering a handful of crumbs only to blow them away in the next breath. I didn’t know who the other woman was, but I knew she existed. Why else had I been repositioned to second string so quickly following our earlier conversation? But I was deliriously determined. I thought if we continued seeing each other at any capacity he would come to his senses, change his mind about me and suddenly realise that I was sexy and smart and fun and charming, the way he’d told me I was. That he’d want to forgo the other potential women and give what we had a shot. I wanted to be open to all of it, to not have my feelings hurt, to not come second, to not be kept a secret in the stark hours of the day. I was swimming in a sea of shame, I just wanted to be wanted.

The dynamic between us continued to shift. There were no more suspiciously timed smoke breaks, no more stolen kisses when nobody was around, no more shared long glances, or brushing up against each other behind the coffee machine ‘accidentally’. Purposefully acting as though we were hardly friends was one thing, but this became something else entirely. Suddenly he really did feel like a stranger. Whatever copacetic work relationship we’d created was slipping, and my anxiety was ceiling high. I decided to confront him, not in an aggressive manner, but it felt as though he was avoiding me and I needed transparency. I asked if we could grab a drink after work, and he said he would come over and meet me at mine. I felt my stomach in my throat. I knew what was coming, and I felt so despondent towards all of it.
When he got to mine, he gave me a five-minute spiel on how poor his mental health had gotten, that he just needed some time to himself, and could we press pause for a bit? I was overly sympathetic to his cause, asking if he had a therapist, and encouraging him to take all of the time that he needed to get back to himself. It was obvious that I was upset, and I could sense that he wanted to comfort me, but he wouldn’t go near me. As though I’d confuse any physical act of consolation toward me as something that it no longer was.

A few days later at work, a woman he’d recently become friends with came into the café with her friends. I knew she’d recently moved to Adelaide from Melbourne, namely because my bosses talked about almost everyone, seeing me always knowing too much about people I didn’t know. I didn’t take much notice of them at first, giving the small group a distracted hello as I kept my head down behind the machine. It wasn’t until later, when she came back inside from the outdoor area to ask for something that I saw it, she was wearing his hoody. How did I know it was his you might ask? Because I’d worn the same one to breakfast before too. That lying little shit, I thought to myself. I was seething. Not because he was sleeping with someone else, that much was obvious, but because he’d weaponised his mental health as a means to avoid being honest with me about it, all the while keeping me as a faux placeholder. I felt like I was bursting at the seams, so desperate to be honest with my bosses about it who I’d forged my own friendship with, just to have a semblance of confirmation bias. I wanted them to tell me, yes, he’s awful! What a terrible, awful, horrible man! But I couldn’t say anything. I was still so anxious about them finding out, discovering that I’d been lying to them for months, five days a week and then some. I was not about to potentially lose my job over a man who tried to bring the term ‘shawtie’ back.

Weeks passed, and I hadn’t heard a peep out of him, nor had I seen him at work. Despite my suspicions surrounding the woman in the hoody, I didn’t have anybody in proximity to confirm them. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place; existing in a state of tight-lipped limbo that he’d relegated me to the moment he asked us to momentarily pause things before he went silent. It felt unfair, and it was. I knew then that the position that I was in would be perpetual if I didn’t take it upon myself to again, seek clarity on whatever it was that was or wasn’t happening between us. Nervously, I phoned him, and we very awkwardly organised to meet at our local pub for a drink. I timed it out in vain, making sure that we were meeting on the day that I was getting my hair done, as though me being blonde would miraculously see him change his mind about me. It didn’t work. I remember that afternoon feeling so bizarre, as though I was sitting in front of somebody who looked and sounded just like him but was a completely different person. I asked him what had happened in the space between, and he told me completely expressionless that his feelings had changed completely, that it was just something that happened to him. I don’t recall what I said in response, only him walking away from the table.

Not long after our conversation took place, I was having knock offs after work with the barista nowhere to be seen. He’d begun to take significant amounts of time off for his music-related personal work endeavours. And I couldn’t have been more grateful to finally be relieved of playing pretend when he was in the same vicinity as me. I’d completely ran out of steam, I had nothing left to give to the cause. We were doing our usual shtick of drinking too much and equally hogging the iPod to queue our favourite, most annoying songs when one of my bosses mentioned the barista. It must have been written all over my face. I can’t say I’m surprised, we were likely down six vodka slushies each, and any version of a poker face I’d been maintaining for the previous three months completely crumbled. I was pissed in every sense of the meaning. “Oh, Tor” one of my bosses said sympathetically with an equally sad expression on her face, “we know”. Queue the tears. When I tell you I sobbed, I mean I cried like an adult-sized baby while everyone took turns looking at me like I was the saddest girl they’d ever seen. It was deeply uncomfortable. And before I could assess if it was even appropriate, I was drunkenly divulging everything to everyone sat at the table outside. I. did. not. miss. a. beat.
I don’t know exactly what I was expecting in terms of a response, I just wanted the opportunity to finally have an honest conversation about him with people who really knew him. It felt as though the biggest weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Not purely because of the extreme amounts of sympathy I was quickly garnering but because I was vindicated – my suspicions about Melbourne-hoody-woman were immediately confirmed despite having never asked. Everyone that I worked with not only knew about our not-so-secret months long rendezvous, but they also knew that he was already dating her. I stopped crying and saw red instead.

Being in my early twenties, I wasn’t particularly well-versed in letting things go. I didn’t want enlightenment or peace; I wanted the final word. For him to know that I knew, everything. A few days after my world-shattering-post-work-drinks, I messaged him asking for my belongings back – it was a trap that he likely saw coming. He confirmed that he had my things and would drop them off shortly, and I sat in my bedroom on the second floor staring out the window waiting for him to arrive with the rage of a woman wronged. I saw his car pull up first, and his message informing me that my things were on the doorstep second. When I tell you I sprinted down those stairs – my god – I was like lightning. Not so fast, bucko!!! I caught him. Stuck my head in his passenger window with all of my dignity left back inside my house and blurted out that everybody knew everything, myself included. I really don’t remember what happened next, although I wish I could. Raising my voice wasn’t in my character and still isn’t, but I’m sure I dramatically expressed my feelings and later felt worse for it. As though I wasn’t entitled to my outrage.

Eventually, he was dismissed from the café after requesting too many consistent days off. The final straw being our bosses seeing footage of him on Instagram, drinking bubbles on a boat interstate, ‘that doesn’t look like work to us!’ And I should have again felt vindicated, but it wasn’t enough for me. I was relieved to have him out of my life in a professional capacity, finally feeling as though I could take up space at work. But for months afterward, I couldn’t stop myself from asking why I was never enough for him. Consistently poking holes in any self-advocating theories that I was desperately trying to produce as a means to mend my self-esteem. He was a canon event, and a different version of the same man that I had half-dated multiple times before him but had never really learnt from. An insidious breed of half-boy, half-man with an enticing front of emotional intelligence, and a habit of taking whatever they believe to be rightfully theirs in the moment. Dating him altered how I perceived myself for longer than I would like to admit, but it was a fundamental lesson in the manifestation of denying myself so many things simultaneously. Namely, the act of being honest with myself and all of that I desired. As though I wasn’t entitled to those things in the first place. I really do believe that meeting him shrunk me to a size that was so uncomfortable in stature, that I would never again contort myself to fit somebody else’s brief of ‘woman’. In all of the years since knowing him, despite all of the dating horror stories, I never have, and I will never again deny myself of all of my wants and all my desires. As they say, a reason, a season, or a lifetime.